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Most businesses looking to upgrade their phone communications are taking advantage of the benefits a VoIP system and service has to offer.  Productivity, internal communications, and customer satisfaction all can achieve measureable improvement through VoIP technology.  Below are a few items to review to ensure your business is ready for a conversion to VoIP.

• Hosted vs. On-site – The first question to be addressed is if your business should invest in an on-site VoIP system versus a Hosted system.  The advantage of a Hosted VoIP Service is that the up-front investment is much lower, as you are only purchasing the VoIP handsets and some minor equipment.  Typically, the hosted provider will handle your administration as well.  Your monthly service is a function of the number of users/phones you have on the system.  On-site systems are much more expensive up-front and you have responsibility for administration.  However, if you provision sip trunks to the system, you only need to provision the number of trunks to match your maximum concurrent call volume.
• Existing Telecom Contract – Check with your current phone service provider to determine whether you are under contract.  Many have automatic renewals that kick in without notice.  If you are planning on switching in the near future, understanding the nature of automatic renewals and cancellation notice requirements is important.
• Bandwidth Requirements – VoIP does not require much bandwidth, only 80kb per call, both upload and download.  Gain an understanding of your maximum concurrent calls as well as your current bandwidth utilization.  A wired internet connection to the building is highly recommended.  If you are already experiencing the effects of bandwidth saturation, you should consider expanding your bandwidth prior to deploying VoIP.
• Ethernet – VoIP phones require an Ethernet connection to the phone.  Most VoIP phones have two ports, so it can share an Ethernet connection with a computer.  Most of the VoIP phones have 100mb ports.  If you have built your internal network to gigabit speeds, there are some VoIP phone models with 1gb ports.  One “gotcha” we run into a lot when converting companies from analog phones to VoIP are wall mounted locations.  Ethernet cabling will need to be run to those locations and power delivery is also a consideration.
• Power Requirements – VoIP phones require power, and there are a couple of options.  Traditional power cords from the phone (provided with the phone) to an outlet are the least expensive alternative.  You can also deliver power to the phone over the Ethernet cabling if you deploy Power over Ethernet (POE) switches on your network.  This is a very nice luxury, as it removes the power cord from the desk area, but POE switches come in at a premium over standard switch pricing.  If you are deploying a wall mounted phone or phones, or even a conference room phone where you don’t want to be inhibited by a power cord, POE becomes more than a necessity.  If you don’t want to spring for a full switch that is POE enabled, there are some single port POE injectors that will deliver power to the single phone.
• Paging – Many VoIP phones and hosted service provides offer paging to phones, direct paging, and paging groups.  Additional considerations come into play if you have any overhead paging systems tied into the phone system.  There are some adapters on the market that will allow for this, but be sure to have a conversation with your potential providers to see how they will accommodate your needs in this area.
• Provider Selection – The good news is that you have a large pool of potential providers to choose from.  For hosted services, your phone equipment and service will come from the same provider.  Every company has their own priorities and goals that will influence provider selection, but there are a few characteristics that should be table stakes for your potential provider:

1. Do they promote best in class VoIP phone manufacturers?  Cisco and Polycom are great examples.
2. Does their service footprint cover your potential for growth and expansion?
3. How do they address Quality of Service?  Most suggest more bandwidth.  sipVine contends that QoS is best handled by a local device to prioritize voice packets.  Read more in our VoIP Voice Quality whitepaper.
4. Does the provider require a term contract and do they build the phones in a locked manner?  Hosted VoIP providers confident in their delivery of service do not build in such restrictions.
5. Do they provide a consultative service to effectively build your system to match how you do business?  Good providers help you take advantage of the power and flexibility of these solutions through custom programming.  If the providers provide a web portal for you to do it yourself, be wary.  It is cool, but it also speaks to their service philosophy.
6. What is the provider’s customer service philosophy?  Do they essentially become an extension of your company and function as your phone department?  Wouldn’t that be refreshing?  It is what your business deserves!

I hope this checklist of items has been a good resource for you as you evaluate the potential of moving to a VoIP system.  Your comments are welcome!

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and has a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments. 

sipVine, a national business VoIP service provider, has published a new ebook that provides many insights on how to fully take advantage of your hosted VoIP phone service.  If you are currently utilizing the service or are investigating hosted VoIP for your business, this ebook will provide you with many ideas on how to leverage the new technology to enhance your communications with your customers and employees.

In the eBook, 19 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Hosted VoIP Phone Service, we cover the following topics:

• Delight Your Customers with an Effective Call Flow and Auto Attendant
• Streamline Your High-Customer-Touch Associates
• Generate Efficiencies in Your Business
• Accessorize Your System
• Select the Right Provider

What if your phone service provider delivered customer service as if they were located next door to your office?  Fantasy?  Perhaps, but your business deserves it!  You should consider moving to a hosted phone service where your business phone equipment and phone service are provided by the same company.  The formula will be in place to make awesome customer service delivery possible, and it will then be a responsibility of that provider to make it happen.

At sipVine, we have built this concept into our core beliefs and practices, as we understand what it will mean to a customer to feel that they are receiving remarkable customer service from a telecommunications provider.  The marketplace has been under serviced, subject to a series of a voice recognition entry points just to have your call delivered to a service representative who doesn’t have a clue of who you are and how your business uses communication services.

There are a few ways in which we make this possible:

No Contracts – sipVine’s philosophy is that no customer should be bound to a term contract with us to achieve discounts or other advantages.  We have a simple rate schedule that drives savings to our customers.  Moreover, we sincerely believe that we need to earn our business each and every day, and have built such a belief system into our culture and practices. 

Customization – Customers expect that their investment in new technology will provide them with features and benefits that their current system doesn’t offer.  However, we take that one step further in that our technology is very flexible and can be customized to meet their needs or enhance their communication practices.  We hold extensive configuration meetings with the customer prior to installation so that we can fully understand their communication patterns and consult on the best design for their system deployment.  We then handle all of the programming to make this happen.  Not only does this help guarantee satisfaction, it gives us the opportunity to get to know our customers in a very detailed way. 

The Phone Company Next Door – Because we get to know our customers in great detail and that knowledge is specifically passed to all service personnel, we are able to deliver a feeling to our customers that we are their personal phone department.  We handle all of their phone administration for them, and thus are in position for routine contact with a variety of people within the organization.  Whether we are servicing a company based in Kansas City where we are located, or one of our customers in other cities across the country, we routinely delight them through this approach of providing service as if we were the phone company next door.

As I mentioned, the capability of delivering such service is quite possible for any hosted VoIP provider.  As you research potential providers, ask a series of questions that will uncover their approach to service and reveal if they are leveraging the unique opportunity to deliver superb service.  Here are just a few:

1. Are you able to customize the call flow and other features to meet my unique business needs?  Do you do this programming or is it incumbent upon me to do the set up via a web portal?
2. When I call for service or administration, where does this call go?  Will I be talking with someone who knows my business and the unique configuration we may have?  Are your technicians contract or overseas?
3. Are the officers of the company engaged in service delivery in any capacity?

This should help provide an idea as to how they approach customer service.  Happy hunting and remember, your business deserves it!

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments. 

There are a number of VoIP phone models and manufacturers, and choosing the right ones can make or break hosted VoIP phone service providers.  sipVine, a nationwide provider of hosted phone service, chooses to promote Cisco and Polycom models for its VoIP phone line-up for a variety of reasons.  

Best of Breed – Certainly, there’s an element of name recognition in these phones that provides credibility to a privately held provider such as sipVine.  Selecting Cisco and Polycom, both best of breed manufacturers, provides obvious advantages to companies in this segment.  Quality manufacturing, product warrantees, and overall reliability are extremely important, and the benefits are felt by end user customers.

Ease of Use – When end user customers are transitioning to new technology, delivering phones that allow for the vast VoIP feature set to be intuitive and easy to use is paramount to the success of a hosted phone service provider.  sipVine has found that both of these manufacturers have crafted their phones to be easy to use and adapt to a variety of VoIP software platforms.

Flexibility in Programming – End user customers are not interested in how easy a phone is to configure with the software, but they do benefit in the outcomes of flexible, adaptable phones.  As an example, sipVine is able to keep the phone system affordable to the end user by virtue of the ability to devise configuration scripts which can mass configure large numbers of phones.  Setting up small and large businesses is quick and easy, which keeps installation charges low.  Additionally, sipVine has been able to add several features and custom design the customer configuration in large part due to the phone line-up selected.

Phone Line Up is Not Proprietary – With the Polycom phones and the Cisco Small Business series, the phones are not proprietary to a manufacturer base system.  This allows hosted companies to adapt the phones to its particular VoIP software.  It also fits well with providers such as sipVine, which does not hold their customers to term contracts.  sipVine recognizes that companies are making decisions both on the technology and the provider and wants to allow customers the flexibility to move their phones to another hosted provider if sipVine doesn’t meet all expectations.  Fortunately, this flexibility has produced very infrequent movement away, but is a compelling message nonetheless.

Additional Benefits Specific to Cisco – Simply put, sipVine and end user customers love
these phones.  They are very easy to use and provide a number of custom approaches in deployment.  The screens and menu options are very easy to understand and follow, and the line appearance buttons allow for a variety of use, such as speed dials with user presence indicators, park placement and retrieval, and direct dial and main line delivery.

Additional Benefits Specific to Polycom – Hands down, Polycom speaker phone technology is the best in the business.  For end users who utilize the speaker phone feature routinely, they cannot go wrong with a Polycom phone.  Certainly, most people are very familiar with the conference room phones offered by Polycom.  Because of the quality of the speaker on the desk phones, many customers deploy a desk phone in smaller conference rooms to save on the expense of the more traditional conference room phone.  Polycom phones are also easy to use and, if it matters, they are just darned good looking as well!

A quality line up of VoIP phones is an important criterion for hosted phone service provider selection.  You cannot go wrong with Cisco and Polycom phones in a provider’s line up!

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments. 

Deciding upon the best phone service provider can be challenging for any business.  Given new technology, there are a host of new options available to you in the marketplace and you are no longer bound to your traditional telephone provider.  You should start by determining your organization’s ability/desire to utilize new technology in your communication practices and identifying the characteristics of a phone service provider that will meet your expectations.

If your company desires to utilize new technology in your communication practices and you want to keep the capital expenses low for such an endeavor, you can consider a hosted phone service provider.  This literally opens up the competition to a number of great providers.  These providers provide both the phone service and phone system, as the phone system is provided in a cloud environment and the service is delivered over the internet.  Additionally, if your company has points of presence in multiple cities or has virtual employees, they all can be on a common phone system and you can consolidate service providers!

The process of narrowing down your potential list of hosted phone service providers can be
quite daunting.  Set your expectations high, as new entrants in this marketplace have helped push customer service to new heights.  Here is a list of questions for potential service providers that can help you narrow the list:

1. Describe your approach to customer service.  Do I have an account team to rely upon?  How are requests for service handled and are there multiple ways to create a service ticket?
2. Do you conduct a consultative session with me on customizing the configuration for the hosted phone service so that it conforms to how we do business?
3. How do you handle VoIP voice quality management?  Do you deploy a device on our network or do you manage this solely by bandwidth expansion?
4. Describe your hosted platform.  Is it located in a secure data facility?  What redundancies are built in? 
5. What disaster recovery options are available to me with your service?
6. Given our industry, what features do you believe we will benefit the most from?

These questions will help qualify candidates and you can narrow down competitiveness of bids from the providers who answer the above qualifications to your satisfaction.  First and foremost, judging the potential provider on their willingness and ability to get to know you and your needs through the qualification stage is a great indicator of the type of service they will provide.  Those providers who are experienced in working in multiple industries and can provide the consultation necessary to appropriately customize the solution to meet your expectations will clearly rise to the top.

Many focus on the features, coolness factor, and price, but fail to be able to truly understand your business and what is important to you.  Your business deserves to be supported by a provider who can be seen as your phone department rather than a vendor.

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments. 

There are countless benefits available for businesses when they switch to a hosted VoIP phone service.  Price is a big driver that has certainly been delivered by national VoIP providers as well as smaller, regional or local carriers.  However, when choosing a provider, don’t just settle for the price benefit received from providers who merely drop ship the phones with basic configurations for your business.

The beauty behind hosted VoIP phone service is that there can be many programmatic features and custom configuration options for your business, assuming the provider has a robust and flexible platform.  Every business has a flow of how they would like their calls routed and handled, and there are many ways to customize this delivery.  Your first test of a provider’s willingness to customize a call flow is whether they conduct a configuration meeting with you in advance of the delivery of the phones.  If it is merely setting up direct dial numbers for every phone and driving calls to your main number to one individual or to an auto attendant, there is a chance that you’re missing out on options to make the phone service work exactly how you would like it to.

In addition, one very important decision point is who is taking the responsibility for your voice quality.  You should be alerted to potential issues if a selling point from a drop shipper is “just plug the phones into your office LAN and they work.”  Hosted VoIP phones do in fact “work” when you do this, but call quality has not been addressed.  If this is addressed merely by internet bandwidth sizing and capacity, you still may face call quality issues.  Make sure your provider is delivering a new router or edge device for your LAN that has Quality of Service software built in.  This will ensure that your voice packets over the internet are prioritized and are not interrupted by data traffic. 

With careful selection of your VoIP provider based upon their desire and ability to configure your phones and call flow to how you do business and how they address call quality, you will enjoy BOTH economic benefits and the many benefits of the advanced calling features of a VoIP phone system!

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments. 

One of the more frustrating customer service examples comes every month in your business’ phone bill. A common practice among phone provides is to advertise and promote a rate for service, only to tack on surcharges and other “pass through” items as a means to deflect the responsibility for their rates being different. 

This practice is entrenched in the industry, both from the traditional phone service providers as well as the new VoIP phone service entrants in the marketplace.  Items like E911 Service Fee, Regulatory Recovery Fee, Universal Service Fund Surcharge, FCC Fees, and State Telecom Excise Taxes all are nicely tacked onto your bill and easily add 15% to 20% more onto your monthly bill.

At sipVine, we made the decision not to advertise pricing without those surcharges built in.  The only addition you’ll see from us is for local sales taxes.  We wanted our customers to experience satisfaction at all phases of the service, including receiving a simple invoice for service that matches what was promised in our quote.

Additionally, we do not promote pricing adjustments based upon term contracts.  We believe that our customers should receive the best price available and not have to sign a term agreement. 

Contact us to discuss your needs.  Our goal is to deliver a customized configuration at a price that will deliver benefits and be exactly what we proposed! 

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments.